2nd Sunday Lent – In Christ all things hold together…

What’s the good news about the Transfiguration? It’s the vision of our wounded humanity encompassed & embraced by the glory of God in the moment – right now! – and a promise for the ultimate healing & restoration of consonance of all that is dissonant in our lives.

Yesterday demonstrated the network of meaning given to God’s encounter with humans on the mountain. Today, let’s look at what we humans bring to this encounter on the mountain top. God in Christ Jesus through the Spirit embraces the total mystery of humanity’s woundedness. 

Living by cultural constraints:    Genesis 22:2              He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.”

Resistance to the encounter God:     Exodus 20:18f              When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance,  and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.”

Fear of abandonment:     Exodus 32:1              When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

Resorting to idols:     Hosea 4:13              They sacrifice on the tops of the mountains, and make offerings upon the hills, under oak, poplar, and terebinth, because their shade is good. Therefore your daughters play the whore, and your daughters-in-law commit adultery.

Pride & rebellious spirit:     Zephaniah 3:11              On that day you shall not be put to shame because of all the deeds by which you have rebelled against me; for then I will remove from your midst your proudly exultant ones, and you shall no longer be haughty in my holy mountain.

False worship & oppression of poor as idolatry:     Isaiah 65:6f            See, it is written before me: I will not keep silent, but I will repay; I will indeed repay into their laps their iniquities and their ancestors’ iniquities together, says the Lord; because they offered incense on the mountains and reviled me on the hills, I will measure into their laps full payment for their actions.

Mark brings all this together, I believe to show how God in Christ Jesus through the Spirit embraces the total mystery of humanity’s woundedness.